ANZ Banking Group has announced plans to introduce a name-checking function on transactions, following the lead of other major Australian banks, including CBA, Westpac, and NAB. The implementation of this feature aims to prevent payments from being made to scammers.
ANZ CEO Shayne Elliott revealed during a parliamentary review of major banks that the bank is investing significant funds, amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars, in scam prevention and detection. He emphasized that addressing the issue of consumers falling victim to scams requires a collaborative effort across the ecosystem, acknowledging the need for an ecosystem response.
While ANZ plans to introduce name checks, Elliott acknowledged that this measure alone would not completely eliminate the top two scam types in Australia: investment scams and romance scams. He noted that scammers are adaptive and constantly evolving their tactics.
ANZ’s customer fairness adviser, Evelyn Halls, highlighted a surge in bank impersonation scams observed toward the end of 2022. Malicious actors utilized SMS spoofing to create the appearance that scam messages originated from ANZ. The bank has implemented various measures, such as in-app messaging, to warn customers about these scams. Additionally, ANZ has implemented behind-the-scenes measures to intercept, detect, and prevent transactions resulting from these scams.
Halls explained that ANZ opted not to send text warnings to customers to avoid confusion about which messages to trust. The bank focuses on preemptively stopping scams from occurring and employs different triggers to identify potential scam transactions. Intercepting scams before the payment is made is the preferred approach, as it minimizes the need to identify and recover fraudulent transactions later on.